Phil Thomas was a consultant urological surgeon in Brighton. A Welshman of exceptional ability, he made particular contributions to his specialty interest in transgender surgery and to the development of urology in East Africa. He was born in Cardiff on 30 September 1958, into a strongly medical family; his parents, uncles, aunts and a grandfather were all doctors. His father, Lewis Philip Thomas, was a gifted surgeon who worked at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport; his mother, Anne Gwendolen Thomas née Tighe, was a leader in family planning. Philip was educated at Wells House in the Malvern Hills and then at Bryanston. In 1976, Philip joined St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School, London. Despite many distractions, often led by Phil, he remained sufficiently focused on his studies to qualify MB BS with honours in surgery in 1981. He quickly moved on in surgery, obtaining the FRCS in 1986, working initially under Brian Peeling in Newport. He completed his urology training at Guy’s with Tony Mundy, who described Phil as ‘more than usually competent, more than usually knowledgeable and more than usually interesting and amusing’. Phil always strove to learn from the best and to be the best. He won a gold medal in the urology FRCS specialty exam. He completed his urology training on a rotation to Brighton, where we soon discovered that Phil was exceptionally well informed and could be relied upon to keep us up to date with the latest urological publications. His strengths as a teacher and communicator were appreciated by both staff and patients. Phil became involved in urology in the developing world through Urolink, the British Association of Urological Association’s (BAUS) group that works with colleagues in low-income countries, mainly, but not exclusively, in East and Southern Africa. Phil joined the Urolink committee and, in 1998, went on the first of several visits to the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC) at Moshi in Tanzania. KCMC was unusual in having a well-established urology department under Lester Eshleman, an American pastor and urologist who ran a urology training programme for surgeons from East and Southern Africa. The one-year urology course was oversubscribed by general surgeons keen to learn how to treat prostate problems by transurethral resection and to repair urethral strictures by urethroplasty, both common conditions. Support for KCMC by short teaching visits by Urolink urologists had been in place for some years. On Phil’s first visit we travelled overland from Nairobi to Moshi with a group of Kenyan surgeons, had two punctures on the way and arrived exhausted at KCMC at 5pm ready for a cold beer, only to be greeted by Eshleman, who immediately took us on a lengthy ward round to plan the next day’s operating lists. Phil was the lynchpin of the urology workshops, attending every subsequent biennial meeting until 2019. The workshops consisted of a few days of intense teaching, operating, planning post-operative management and, most importantly, socialising with our African colleagues, who held Phil in the highest esteem. Phil introduced many BAUS members, both consultants and trainees, to East Africa, inspiring in most a lasting love for the continent and a passionate wish to bring urological care to its people by training and supporting surgeons from the region. Phil’s urological career was wide and varied. Appointed as a consultant urological surgeon at Brighton in 1995, he took on cancer and reconstructive surgery, and then broadened into transgender surgery. A brilliant technical surgeon, with a real empathy for his patients, Phil led this field at Charing Cross Hospital and in Sussex. In 2016 *The Guardian* newspaper published a feature ‘Meet the transgender surgeons: “Demand is going through the roof”’, with Phil making a major contribution. From social media postings it is clear Phil was held in the highest regard by the transgender community. At Brighton he became a respected and influential member of the management team, making a lasting impression as a finance director with his ‘no nonsense’ approach to his medical colleagues, winning the Healthcare Financial Management Association’s working with finance – clinician of the year award in 2010. He made the most of Brighton as a coastal city. His life-long passion for sailing developed initially within Cardigan Bay, Wales and then Brighton and the South Coast. He regularly sailed competitively from Brighton Marina with his anaesthetic colleague, Duncan McDonald; another area in which Phil excelled, including winning the J/111 World Championships, J Cup and Cowes Week. He married Helen Burton in 1987 and had three children. They later separated, but Phil remained a devoted father to Georgie, Pete and Shan. He subsequently married Caryl Terlezki in 2019, continuing a Welsh connection, and, setting up home in Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, continuing a love of the sea and sailing. He will be remembered as a man of exceptional talents, brilliant in many fields, a great friend to many, wonderful company, funny and generous. He left us too early, on 12 May 2022, aged 63, having been unwell for three months with covid and was sadly deprived of enjoying with Caryl a well-deserved retirement.